


Amateur Photography

by bubblesbythebeach



Series: Unobservable Phenomena [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, F/F, Femslash February, Pre-Series, Romance, Semi-retirement, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Sussex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:41:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 11,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3111638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bubblesbythebeach/pseuds/bubblesbythebeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I'm finding this continued prying into my personal life highly inappropriate.”</p><p>A little bit of travelling. A little bit of corporal punishment. A <em>little death</em>. A little near-death experience. A little bit of blackmail. A little bit of Italian espresso. A little bit of Pakistani curry.</p><p>Irene had been determined not to retire until the riding crop gave her Carpal Tunnel. Sherlock Holmes ruins everything. Until she rents a cottage in Sussex Downs and meets the flustered city woman trying to get it ready.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a Prominent Novelist

Their faces always  _light_ up when they open the door. It’s so uncontrollable, so much like dogs greeting their returning owners, or fat-faced infants recognising their mother.

Irene wipes her shoes on the welcome mat – navy heels made of mesh and lace over her pantyhose – and Marguerite already has her hands on her shoulders, pulling her forward. “Oh, must you?” Irene says as Marguerite leaves an artless kiss on one half of her mouth.

The thing is, Marguerite is not a submissive. She is not business; she is pleasure. That’s why she grips and tugs on Irene’s arms so boldly, why she kisses her any place and any moment she pleases. Marguerite, of course, has no inkling that when her husband gladly leaves the house for her to edit her novel in peace, he is really engaging in the morning, and sometimes afternoon, services of The Woman.

But just because Marguerite doesn’t like the crop, does not mean she doesn’t like Irene’s hands on her backside, or her subtle reprimands, or the way she draws out every hour of her visit while Marguerite herself is listening for her husband’s car returning to the garage.

Irene presses her finger into the centre of Marguerite’s plum-glossed lips. “Hush, darling, hush.” She looks into her eyes, watching the needy, simmering glow concentrate on Irene’s face. “You haven’t even offered me coffee,” Irene says in a low voice, and Marguerite practically sags in defeat.

“You great big tease, Irene,” she says, turning away in a huff and walking at speed into the kitchen.

Irene unwinds her scarf from around her neck and calls down the hallway, “You know you like it, darling.”

At the sound of her voice the Norton family’s poodles come running towards her from the opposite direction, so used to this perfumed visitor who calls on both their masters, this esteemed friend of the family. The white one sprints down the length of the rug to leap about in front of Irene’s legs, and she soon feels the black one’s wet nose at the side of her knee, just nudging up the hem of her flower print dress.

“Ah. Hello, doggies.”


	2. and Her Husband

“You sent me a lot of vile messages recently, Mr Norton.” Irene lets the silence stretch out after that. She uncrosses and recrosses her legs the other way.

Ian doesn’t reply for a long while. His eyes are open and it’s odd, more than anything else, to see him staring at the ceiling so animated with anger. He came in awfully tense, jaw clenched, and that hasn’t changed since Irene walked in behind him.

“You broke Maggie’s heart,” he says at last. “She didn’t tell me. But I saw.”

Irene hums in acknowledgement. She licks her lips before saying softly, “Turn over.”

There’s a shift on the bed sheets, a stretch of the ropes that bind Ian’s hands together above his head.

Irene stands up, firm in her resolve. “We’re going to start one last lesson, my love. Tell me what you learned.” She takes a wooden paddle, one of her heaviest instruments, from a trunk at the foot of the bed.

Irene bends slightly and unzips the backs of her black sandals with her free hand before climbing onto the bed. Ian is holding himself up on his forearms, head hanging tensely above them.

“You’ll end up with some awful knots in your neck,” Irene warns as she settles herself astride Ian’s bare calves. When he doesn’t take the hint and settle into his usual, more relaxed position she swings the paddle onto his backside. Her lips thin as she watches Ian jump with a stifled grunt.

“You don’t get to finish today. You know I don’t use the paddle on you often. It means you have to concentrate, and tell me exactly what you know you did wrong.”

Ian, shoulders still high and proud, makes a noise in his throat that can only be construed as insolent. A second smack forces his mouth open in a gasp.

“Can you think of anything?” Irene demands.

It goes on like this, Irene breathing evenly and striking for each answering silence, but she’s good, the best, and as admirably as Ian holds out it’s not long before he blurts out, “I shouted at you!”

Irene rests the end of the paddle on the mattress, hand flexing around the handle. “That’s right. You disrespected your mistress. Can you remember all the vile things you said to me?”

She gives him a strike for every line until his skin is flushed from pelvis to knee.

“It hurts too much for you to come, that’s right, darling,” Irene croons. “How many more, then? Until you finish your lesson? If you don’t give me a number, I’ll have to decide myself.”

She gives him five hits with barely a pause, counting the hitches in his breath rather than the sound of the paddle. She replaces a lock of hair behind her ear and says quietly, “Do you want to safeword?”

“N—no, Miss Adler.”

Irene leans forward and drops a kiss on his shoulder, putting her mouth near his ear. “You want me to keep going. Because you know you’re in the wrong. You were with _me_ all those months without darling Marguerite ever knowing.”

Ian’s voice trembles and this time she knows it’s not just because of her. His wife’s not the only broken-hearted one in this. “Yes, Miss Adler.”

*

As Irene packs up and changes clothes she spares a thought for Marguerite with her drooping beige cardigans and her sad, brown, kicked puppy eyes. How Marguerite hadn’t tried to text Irene at all, but Ian had given her a dozen shouting voicemails telling her what a despicable coward she’d been, going behind both of their backs – he never brought up the fact that he’d paid for her, brought her into their lives – but he barrelled on and ranted at her how distraught and betrayed and inconsolable Maggie was, how dare she have an affair with his wife and treat her like that.

It was a very public, very sensationalised marriage breakdown. It will be a long time between Marguerite’s books from now on.


	3. the Consulting Criminal's Chauffeur

_I’ll send a car for you.  
M_

It’s a black Mercedes and the driver is dressed in a smart grey blazer. He’s short, with dark hair and eyes, a small face with a soft expression. There’s a rumpled look around his eyes and mouth that adds years onto his helpful smile.

“Get yourself comfortable, ma’am, it’s a long drive,” he says as he closes the door for her.

His voice was soft as well, almost lulling you to sleep. A voice for cabs coming from Heathrow at midnight, for straight roads through the dark and yellow streetlights.

“Take your shoes off if you want,” he adds once they’re on their way. “Seats aren’t perfect for tall people, unlike me. You can re-pretty yourself up in an hour and a half.” His tone is nothing but friendly.

Irene glances at her stilettos and hums in acknowledgement. She settles her coat across her lap to warm the skin left uncovered by a silver cocktail dress.

“Your boss,” Irene enunciates calmly in the direction of the driver’s seat, “is awfully keen to take me for drinks tonight. I heard he has a good eye for clothes.” She picks the lint from the shoulder of her coat and levels her gaze at the back of the driver’s head. “It _was_ going to be a quick and quiet information exchange, but I’m afraid your boss cancelled and rescheduled. Lucky for him I like parties. Do you know if they’re any good?” she asks, and watches the tilt of his neck carefully.

“Oh I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

His smile in the rear view mirror is slanted and shows a glimpse of teeth. “I’m just the driver, ma’am.”

“Really. For how long?”

“Oh, decent while. Friend of a friend’s boss was looking for some new guys, you know how it is.”

They let the car move on in silence after that. Irene looks out the window; the road is widening, lined by taller trees the further they go from the city centre. They pass a café, and a petrol station, and then the phone in the driver’s left pocket starts ringing, bars of classical music growing louder and louder by the second.

His shoulders shoot up by his ears. “Oh gosh, sorry, but I’m really gonna have to take that. Look, I’ll pull over, won’t be two seconds.”

He moves the car into the parking lane and answers the now deafening phone. His other hand hovers above his seatbelt buckle but he’s saying hello and already distracted.

He says hello in a New York accent. Stretches his vowels loudly. Laughs and cuts the other person off sharply with an affirmative. Laughs a second time, quieter, and hangs up. The engine is quiet.

Irene’s lips move a twitch wider and her eyebrows a twitch higher together. “Where did _that_ come from?”

A shy, chuckling huff. “I trained as an actor when I was young.”

A politely interested hum in return. And it was interesting, wasn’t it, this funny little man’s hidden talent for voices… She decides to smile with the memory. “I trained as a classical singer,” Irene replies.


	4. an Almost Illustrious Client

“Well, now. Have you been _wicked_ , Your Highness?”

The young woman’s leg shifts on the bed, just a slight raising of her knee while her ankle’s tied to the wooden leg. “Yes, Miss Adler.”

Her eyes are so full of fascination and _anticipation_ , watching Irene walk around the corner of the bed, and Irene thinks it might be the simplest scene she’s had in ages. The girl got off on bondage, most of all, the crop second – and yet there’s a delight on her face that Irene is undecided about, whether it will disappear with her first lash or grow even brighter.

*

“Oh my sweet, you’re pink all over.”

Irene flicks precisely at her peaked nipple with the crop and her shriek even is louder than the bedroom can usually accommodate. Irene whips across her navel twice in response, leaving marks above and below her bellybutton that rise up dark pink on her soft flesh. She squirms on the sheets, breath whistling between her teeth, watery eyes set on Irene as she paces.

"From what I’ve seen of you, you may be even worse than I’d thought. Have you been pretending to everyone that you’re a good girl?”

She tries to laugh it off. Sweat is beaded all across her flushed and red face from shuddering against the satin ties on her hands and feet. “I try, Miss Adler. Up to them whether to buy it or not.”

Irene smiles her shark smile. “I don’t think you’re good in _the slightest_.”

She flexes the arch of her back before collapsing back onto the sheets and moaning high in her throat, clear indications for Irene to go on. Irene purses her lips to see her earliest theory confirmed. Obvious, really. 

*

“Would you like to see?" Irene asks, voice low. She leans over and holds her phone in front of the young woman’s gasping face, waiting for her glazed eyes to focus on the photograph on the screen. It’s of herself, of the new black ropes binding her hands and elbows together behind her back.

She finally goes quiet, the pants riding out on her lower lip full of pleasure but not above a whisper, gaze drinking in the photograph of her bound arms above her arse, and the shiny streaks of her arousal on her thighs.

“Oh, thank you, Miss Adler,” she breathes.

“You’re welcome,” Irene smiles indulgently. She turns the camera on again and holds it above both of their heads, puckering her lips and bringing her face close. Her client’s cheek is emanating warmth; Irene pecks her cheekbone and snaps the photograph with a twitch of her thumb.

*

It happens in the middle of her aftercare, when she’s sitting cross-legged on the bed and sipping orange juice. Her shoulders are tilted towards Irene, her dark eyelashes fluttering slowly. “So, have you got a boyfriend, or...?” 

Irene barks out a laugh, though she is not altogether surprised. “No,” she answers.

Her client’s sculpted eyebrows rise in intrigue. Her wrist with the glass of juice in it rotates gracefully as she moves it away from her face, as if she were getting comfortable at a champagne reception and making her first piece of small talk.

“Girlfriend?” she ventures before slyly hiding her cherry lips behind her glass again.

Irene shrugs and blinks lazily. The look she gives the young woman humours her far enough, but shows that she knows that, “You’re not being very polite for a lady of your station, are you?”

She bites her lip and giggles, shoulders hunching. “Sorry, not sorry.”

Irene gets up from the side of the bed with a sigh, picking up a large silver clutch from the floor. “I don’t make time for relationships,” she says casually, heading towards the door. “Life’s too short, and I’ve not met the right woman.”

Her client has raised both her knees in front of her, hands holding onto them. Her hair is a dry, fluffed up cascade behind her neck. She looks young, and sweet, an innocent looking for some fun, and Irene’s fingers tap against the clutch holding her smartphone with the pictures. 

Her client smiles in sympathy. “The right person. Isn’t that always the way.”

“It is. I’ll leave you to freshen up,” Irene says and turns the knob.


	5. her Live-In PA

Irene always wakes up before Kate does. It’s her day off but Kate has set the alarm on her phone for seven in the morning, and half past seven, and seven forty-five as well, but keeps reaching her hand under her pillow to hit ‘snooze’ on the screen until at least eight o’clock.

“I should confiscate your phone and put it under the bed,” Irene says seriously, head laid on her bent wrist.

Kate’s nose pokes out of her bundled duvet. “Have you been watching me sleep?” she asks, muffled.

Irene’s mouth twitches. “Half-asleep, and yes, for the past hour. Come out from under there.”

There’s an advantage to having a king size bed, which is that there’s enough room to keep both the thick, fluffy duvet owned by Kate and a set of thin, kickable sheets which Irene prefers. Irene has a large section of her wardrobe dedicated to expensive sleepwear in dozens of textures and colours, and damned if she’s going to let them go to waste. Kate always goes naked under her duvet.

“Make me,” Kate replies and tucks her nose back under the edge.

“Tsk. The cheek.” And Irene dives onto Kate’s side of the bed, tugging the duvet out of her grip and throwing it up. Kate stifles a noise not so unlike a squeak and jerks her knees towards her stomach, rearranging the duvet under her elbow, but not before Irene catches a glimpse of her soft, shadowed stomach and the hair between her tightly closed legs that leaves her mouth just a little bit dry.

She slides underneath the duvet, too, Kate’s bare breasts bumping against the lace on Irene’s chest. Kate’s shiver at the contact is unmistakable.

Irene lays her hand on Kate’s waist, above the duvet, and pulls back far enough to lower her head to Kate’s chest. She wastes no time, mouth closing softly around the tip of her breast, sucking and nibbling, slowly as possible. Kate’s skin starts to cool outside of her covers but her nipple stays warm and smooth inside Irene’s mouth. It’s only when Irene uses her hand on Kate’s waist to push her from her side onto her back, auburn hair spreading over the thick pillow, that both her nipples start to firm up in the cooler air without Irene on top of her.

Irene opens and closes her bedside drawer and slides back under the covers. She places her head on Kate’s outstretched arm, chest pressed against her side, one smooth calf thrown over Kate’s ankles. Her hand is under the duvet and skimming over the tops of her thighs. It’s a lazy and whimsical movement; it is 8am on a Sunday morning after all. Kate feels her chest rising and falling more quickly and shallowly with her arousal. Irene’s hand is between her legs now, and she’s grinning into her neck with the discovery of how wet she is already.

“I’ll be wanting tea in half an hour,” Irene mumbles, eyes closed, “so let’s see how quickly I can make you come today.”

“Aren’t I a lucky girl.” Kate’s voice is husky and small.

Irene switches the small bullet-shaped massager from one hand to the other and replaces it against Kate’s perineum. Rubs it gently across her folds a few times, until her arousal makes it slick enough to be comfortable. Then she sets it to vibrate.

Kate screws her eyes shut and bites her lip, but it is pulled out from between her teeth when Irene surges forward and kisses her, commanding and all-consuming. Kate hums at the scent of coconut in Irene’s hair falling over her nose, then gives a little shriek into her mouth when Irene angles the massager, the length of her ring finger, up to point against her clit. The vibrations send her stomach muscles clenching, her jaw chattering with delighted pleasure.

She can feel Irene tensing and relaxing rhythmically beside her, pushing her hips against Kate’s thigh while she mouths at her neck. Kate lets her head roll to the side away from Irene’s amorous mouthing and rubbing, self-conscious of her breaths that are quickly turning into moans. Her legs part and her knees rise of their own accord, however, to urge the massager in Irene’s hand to shift around between her folds.

“You said you wanted to be quick,” she whines in frustration.

Irene clucks her tongue. In a flash she pushes up onto her elbows and slides her leg the rest of the way across Kate’s thighs to straddle her. She keeps her eyes on Kate’s, teasingly plucking at the straps on her shoulders and peeling the dark red chemise over her head. She isn’t wearing knickers. Kate can feel the lush curve of her arse against her thighs but only for a second; what really shuts Kate up is not the sight of Irene’s breasts and collarbones in the morning light but how she suddenly leans down and aligns her pubic bone with Kate’s, shifting until the tip of the massager is vibrating against her clit as well.

Kate gasps and her hands fly up to the sides of Irene’s ribcage. Irene is still keeping hold of the massager with one hand while the other tangles itself in Kate’s hair on the pillow. She lets her knees slide out a little from under her, hips pressing harder down onto Kate’s sex and the toy between them.

Something in Kate’s chest goes wobbly and flutters at having Irene face to face, panting silently over her lips. Irene’s fingers are slipping over the sides of the vibrating bullet and rubbing sweetly over the edges of her opening.

“You’re getting wetter by the second, darling,” Irene bites into the hollow of her neck. Her hips are thrusting downward harder now and Kate moans loudly through the ache that pulls her out of the fog of idle pleasure and towards a sharper edge.

Just as Kate thinks Irene will make her finish this way, Irene rolls off of her and hauls her on top. The vibrator disappears from her clit, making her breath catch in her throat with disappointment, and is placed in her hand.

Irene looks up at her with a small proud, encouraging smile on her face. To Kate’s own pride and delight Irene’s eyes are half-lidded as one hand strokes Kate’s hip and the other fondles playfully at her own breast covered in gooseflesh.

“I want to see you put it inside you,” she says, and Kate starts at being reminded the toy is in her palm, moaning to herself even though this is the mildest and least demanding shag they’ve had in weeks.

She rises higher on her knees and drags the bullet from her clit down through her wetness and back. Kate’s shoulders shake involuntarily as the vibrations shoot through her clit again, and through slitted eyes she sees Irene move her hand lower to touch herself, fingers moving rapidly over her clit. Kate gives a series of short, heartfelt moans at the sight of Irene so pink and damp before steeling herself and pushing the massager, small as it is, partway inside herself. Her walls squeeze around its frantic vibration and her gasp sounds high and thin in her own ears, before Irene tugs her down by the elbow and kisses the daylights out of her with her impeccable aim.

Kate feels Irene’s hips thrusting up once, twice in an effort to meet hers. She holds her breath and Irene knocks her hand on the third time and the massager twists inside her and she comes screaming against her fingers and rocking her hips above Irene’s. Irene wraps an arm around her shuddering hips, lending Kate’s weight to the wrist pressed against herself as she jerks and whispers, “Oh, _yes_ ,” into her ear.

Kate doesn’t think that they move for ages after that but she remembers shaking her head blearily. “Breakfast with tea?”

“Parched.”


	6. the Consulting Detective

Irene smiles when her plunging hands find the clutter a man always unknowingly filled his pockets with. They’re deep and sturdily stitched into the wool tweed. Phone, wallet, crumpled receipts, a set of lock picks bundled in a black pouch.

In lieu of a window to climb through, Irene picks the lock on the door. She climbs the stairs, creeps by the walls, ducks into a bedroom, without running into the doctor.

“Oh,” Irene mouths.

Holmes is sleeping on his belly, lips parted against the pillow. Someone’s pulled the sheet up to his chin. It’s so comical, so darling, Irene’s heart quickens with the urge to laugh.

She whirls the Belstaff off her shoulders. Irene takes her phone in one hand, Sherlock’s in the other. The text alert she'd already recorded in the cab, heedless of the driver.

Irene types her number into Sherlock’s phone to text her own. It goes off in her palm, Sherlock jumping awake behind her.

“Hush now,” Irene breathes over his head. She checks his eyes – unfocused from the injection, half-dreaming. “I’m only returning your coat.”

Irene keeps an eye on him as he settles. Well, with that text she now has the detective's number saved. She should’ve taken care of this earlier but what a scrumptious stolen moment this is, leaving benedictions beside Holmes’ bed.


	7. and His Jealous Flatmate

The last day of the year is cold and she wishes she weren’t in a Battersea power station after ten days of rain. She breathes through her nose, deep and steady, dragging the toe of her black boot through a thin puddle. She draws her foot away onto drier ground and watches the shine of the water spread over blue-grey concrete. Like a streak of calligraphy ink, or a fine metallic eyeliner. She goes through more ballet positions, messy and half-hearted.

Irene misses the Belgravia house with her kitchen and her wardrobe. She misses good coffee, and long breakfasts with Kate waiting on her, and not worrying about things.

“ _He’s_ writing sad music!”

“Hello, Doctor Watson,” she greets, arms crossed tiredly.

For a long moment his face is so bare, open, lit up by the windows on her left.

They plead with each other.

“What do I say?”

“What do you _normally_ say?” Watson barks. “You’ve texted him a _lot_.”

“Does he show you my texts?” Irene can’t help asking, a smug slant to her eyes.

Watson scoffs.

“I’m very funny,” Irene insists. “When I feel like it.” She swipes down her messages. “‘Good morning.’ ‘I like your funny hat.’ ‘I’m sad tonight; let’s have dinner.’” Her voice trails off.

Irene meets Watson’s eyes again, only finding something blue and beaten.


	8. Baker Street

Irene’s eyes blink open but her hands stay sandwiched between her jaw and the pillowcase. She blinks and blinks. Finally opening her mouth, her voice is low, husky with sleep in an almost masculine way.

“I’d quite like a coffee,” she tells the two men at the door.

Irene’s eyes land on Sherlock, whose own eyelids are fluttering in confusion. Irene rolls over in the sheets, opening her arms wide. Grinning. “Miss me?”

Sherlock gulps.

*

“You maintained cover for a week before revealing yourself to John. A _week_. Between Christmas and New Year, even, when the populace is comatose with food and brandy. I find it hard to believe anyone _missed_ you.”

“Don’t be like that, darling.” Irene plants her bottom on the arm of John’s chair. Wriggles deliberately.

Irene crosses her arms, pulling Sherlock’s silk dressing gown tight across her chest. She hasn’t worn sleepwear like this in a while and hums in freshly-showered contentment.

Sherlock sits at his desk, waiting for John to bring tea and warily watching Irene get acquainted with all the textiles in the flat. When Irene switches to Sherlock’s chair he coughs.

“This piece of information you’ve acquired. You didn’t – or couldn’t – put it to use. And now: expiry date.”

“I procrastinated,” Irene says defensively. “Enjoyed my holidays. I'd also never faked my death before.”

 

* * *

 

With the fire crackling the temperature of the room was perfect, thick and warm and quiet, and Irene isn’t bored. John has gone, leaving her to watch the plucks of Sherlock’s fingers against his violin’s pale strings.

She is half-content to watch the famous machine think, half-fanatasising in the firelight. This is the perfect atmosphere in which to start, to kneel over his lap and cradle his cheek against her breast and keep him soft and quiet exactly like this.

“Have you ever had anyone?” Slightly narrowed eyes and creased forehead. Relax. “And when I say ‘had’, I’m being indelicate.”

“I don’t understand.”

Irene’s voice drops even softer. “Well, I’ll be delicate, then,” she promises.

Because this is the other side of her hand, balm over wounded flesh, blindfold over frightened eyes, silence descending over panting mouth. She promises.

Irene’s heart actually quickens when Sherlock Holmes returns the grip of her finely boned hand. She finds soft fingertips and blue eyeshine in headlights and her eyes darken with the thrill of tempting a wild animal to eat out of her palm.

“Oh, Mr Holmes… If it was the end of the world, if this was the very last night, would you have dinner with me?”

And so afraid is she of scaring this creature away that she scarcely dares to breathe.


	9. the Ice Man

By the time Irene leaves for Heathrow, the royal blue nail polish has dried on her fingertips and appears black in the dimness of pre-dawn.

“Not you, Junior. You’re done now.”

*

“He’s good, isn’t he? I should have him on a leash – in fact, I _might_.” Irene bares her teeth.

She is torn between sparring with Mycroft Holmes – _dominating_ him, really, from the way he wrings his hands in front of his chin – and watching his little brother crumble into himself in front of her. She’s worked on Sherlock Holmes too long to miss the show now. She continues to turn her head towards his chair.

“It could be worse, _Ice Man_ ,” she enunciates with a hiss. “I’m a few documents short of owning _you_ , you know. Now, off you pop.”

*

“No,” Sherlock says, and electricity runs from Irene’s toes to her crimson smile at Sherlock’s challenge.

“Oh dear God, look at the poor man. You don’t actually think I was interested in you.” Irene widens her eyes up at him, softening her lips in a moue. “Because you’re the great Sherlock Holmes?”

*

She suddenly can’t breathe. Premonitions of loss flit like black-winged Furies across her vision.

“ _Please_. Y—You’re right.”

Six months to live stretch and strain in front of her, water-thin as the sting in Irene’s eyes and irreparably bleak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 221b drabble format ends here, Chapter 10: Karachi will be your garden variety prose. (Y)


	10. Karachi

If this was the very last night.

Irene’s lips are cold. There’s a breeze with a chill in it blowing past her. Behind her bowed shoulders the night is empty and quiet. Irene pinches the black fabric on her collarbone and pulls it closer to her chin.

She parts her mouth and the air hurts her gums.

“Who wants me dead?” she asks.

“Is it Wittstern?”

“Thought he was going to stay the fuck out of Pakistan, is what I thought,” she bites, a mangled and nasal London accent.

“He should pay you more.”

She offers. She doesn’t try to offer again, knowing it was an empty one, but what would she be if she didn’t try once?

*

If this was the very last night.

The temptation to call a landline number in Edinburgh is overwhelming, unanticipated, to the point that she nearly cries out. Her organs and muscles seem to vibrate desperately inside her, at the same time as her vision goes jumpy with panic.

Irene memorised her home phone number when she was four years old and she’s never forgotten it. She cradles her Blackberry in her cramped fingers and very nearly dials it. Defeated only by the fact that, as she swallows the panic into a thick ball and gulps it down and breathes as hard as she can, the person who picks up would be half-asleep, oblivious, and not her mother. Irene revises that fact like a speech, like a times table, although the weight of it crushes her.

You won’t go on missing her for long, Renie.

* 

If this was the very last night.

If she stands up and runs, maybe they’ll shoot her instead.

Irene thinks back over the past twenty-four hours and wonders if that was the same woman – the one who’d shaken and wrenched her arms from side to side and screamed the same words over and over, heedless of the fact that these men weren’t listening, they weren’t letting go of her. She plays it in her head again a little numbly, the image of that head-tossing woman, with a sense of bewilderment and a sense of mourning.

“One minute,” she orders the man standing over her.

She’s been kneeling – too late, her knees are _numb_ – she couldn’t jump up if she tried.

The pause between the two ‘o’s lasts a century.

_Goodbye,_

At the pixellated comma on the Blackberry’s screen, Irene stares almost fondly. A farewell to the world and a pause, poetic and romantic to the point of nausea.

_Mr Holmes._

Fuck you, she thinks intensely. She drops the phone into the man’s impatient hand.

There are undeniably people surrounding her. Standing at varying distances. She’s about to die and she will die alone. Irene’s head is incredibly quiet and her jaw aches from holding back sobs. Her thigh muscles are screaming.

Irene closes her eyes. It’ll be just like going to sleep, won’t it?

* 

Sherlock Holmes’ hand is engulfing her wrist and pulling her along. Her skin is cool under his fingers and poorly-circulated, but not as poorly as her legs which are wobbly underneath her. They run anyway.

Irene feels _sick_ with adrenaline. Night air is slicing through her lungs like ice and wind-blown fabric is getting caught between her thighs.

She screams, “You brought a sword to a gunfight?!” but the words are tugged from her mouth like a silk flag and blown over her shoulder into the darkness.

*

Sherlock moves from the front to the backseat and holds her hands in his lap. He bends his head low to look at Irene’s face across from him, a strain in the back of his neck and a mask of patience over his uncertainty.

“They were going to behead me,” she wrings the words out through her tears. She shakes her head from side to side even as she says it. Her fingers – blue-veined and devoid of rings – squeeze on Sherlock’s and lift and shake and rub them emphatically against his leg. “They were going to—”

“No, no, that was me. It was me. I was there.”

*

Irene wakes up in a curtained room that smells of dust. Sherlock is sitting on the floor against the wall with his knees up, working on a laptop by the light of the en suite bathroom.

His curly head is silhouetted in the doorway when he looks up and Irene doesn’t realise his mouth is moving. The low voice appears like a ghost at the corner of her bed.

“What do you need?”

Irene tries to answer. Her voice croaks, her eyes are already falling closed again in exhaustion, and the next thing she’s aware of is Sherlock lifting a cup of water to her face. She takes it from him and leans away, raising her chin to drain it.

Sherlock hasn’t turned on the main light. His laptop is still on the floor.

Irene nods towards it. “Aren’t you finished?”

He sinks onto the edge of the bed and rakes his hands through his hair. “It has to be perfect,” he says grudgingly. “I’ve delegated, of course, but if the final product isn’t believable this will all be for nothing.”

He tilts his head to look at her. “But yes, very nearly. You’ll be plausibly deceased soon.”

He isn’t gentle about it – the calm delivery sounds cavalier to her ears and Irene feels anger prickle within her desert-dry chest.

“‘Plausibly deceased?’” she repeats. “Do you know—of course you do, you have your phone, you got my message. I almost called you. Can you believe that? You were the only one who would have _cared_ that I’d been killed and you _put_ me there!”

“If. If you’d been killed. And yet here we both are.”

“I’d like to think that my dying would bother you,” Irene snarls. “But then I thought that, and many other things, all that time I knew you, and look how much of an idiot I was.”

Sherlock has laid his hand behind him on the bedspread, body partially turned towards her. A steady blue gaze but a peculiar downward slant to his mouth.

“You say that as if I didn’t come here at all.” It is barely above a whisper.

Irene feels sick again. She wriggles her toes under the blanket and stretches her arches just to feel something. A part of her wants Sherlock to hold her hands again, her shoulders. Another wants to smack him across his back until he screams through the hotel door.

“You’ll feel better after more rest. Flight out is in six hours.”

Irene shifts to lie on her side. She sounds almost normal again. “I was about to die, four hours ago.”

“I imagine not all of your old friends in high places would fly to Pakistan with a scimitar in hand?” She can hear a brushstroke of humour in Sherlock’s voice as he stands and moves his laptop, but it is gone in the next moment: “I won’t take responsibility for your political games anymore, Ms Adler.”

Irene can see his side profile in the bathroom doorway again. Gripped with terror, this time an irrational idea that he would _leave_ , like the moment he walked out of Mycroft Holmes’ fireplace-warmed room.

But Sherlock’s body language as he pauses in the light is so obvious.  Eyes on her, watching, hesitating for eons. Listening to her breaths and sighs as her muscles relax under the blanket, observing every movement of a woman who ought to be dead.

“Oh Sherlock,” Irene says, pitying the both of them, “I’m going to retire.”


	11. Phone Calls from Vietnam

“You haven’t said a word to me since Christmas.” Kate’s voice is deadpan.

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot.”

“So, you’re not dead.”

“On paper, I am. Did you get my care package?”

“Mm. It’s what made me believe you were dead, frankly.”

Irene stirs the ice cubes in her coffee and listens to Kate’s ragged inhale.

“How dare you,” Kate breathes into the phone. “I don’t want your sodding mascara or your sodding clothes or your sodding _perfume_. Was this all a taunt? _How dare you_. I used to take literally _anything_ from you, I knew what I signed up for, but this is too much. I thought you were dead – you practically told me you were going to be – and months later you ship me your things as a sick joke? Do you imagine I’m spraying your perfume on my pillows and pacing around my bedroom weeping into your dresses?”

Irene feels her face split into a bitter grin. “God, you’ve forgotten everything I’ve taught you!”

“I’ll talk back if I fucking like, Irene.”

“I’ll get to the point, then.” Irene pinches the straw in her coffee nervously. “I’m travelling. Come find me. I’m having a coffee. There are motorcycles. You may not like it here but I’ll let you pick where to go next.”

The condensed milk coffee is an exercise in patience, waiting for enough to drip into the bottom of the glass from the filter. The condensed milk makes it too sweet and too rich for her palate but that doesn’t make it intolerable; she’s saving herself for the good stuff later, she supposes.

Kate’s reply is as slow as the dripping coffee, the trickle of milk from a can. “I can’t do this,” she enunciates carefully.

“Well. Somehow I thought you’d say that.” Irene sips from her glass to fill the silence.

“I don’t want your money,” Kate adds desperately.

A tiny ice cube melts on the tip of Irene’s tongue and she smiles around it. “Truly?”

“I’ll sell your clothes instead.”

Kate knows it is beyond her strength to join forces again, but she also knows her own heart and so she says over the phone, “Love you,” and Irene believes her but she does not say it back, and she can almost hear Kate’s shoulders shaking a hundred countries away.

Kate knows Irene’s heart as well. Irene has not found the right woman. But even then she is not ungrateful to those who have done her no harm, so Irene says, “Thank you, darling.”

*

An áo dài in black, appliquéd with red velvet butterflies, is tailored overnight and Irene wears it to meet her new client. The black satin trousers beneath the split gown skim off her thighs, the stiff collar is edged with glitter and elongates her pale neck, and the blood red butterfly wings down the front of her breasts and legs wave indolently with her movement. Her heels are not Louboutins, unfortunately. Her old ones would have coordinated perfectly with their red lacquered soles.

The traditional gown is meant for svelte figures, sedate walking, bicycling schoolgirls. Irene glides around the bed like a silk kite and ties the Irish expat up. She has to admit she rushes the appointment a bit.

“Been living here long? I’m an expat, too. Listen carefully, I’ve got a favour to ask.”


	12. Two Years in Italy

Everything worth seeing in Rome is next to each other. Irene can find an espresso within a minute of walking out the door. The streets are narrow, the cobbles damp, and dark vines with red blooms climb alongside the highest windows. The coffee lasts ten seconds on her lips, but it smells divine.

The barista in her apron and ponytail is already pumping out more shots for the people queued behind Irene; she leaves the tiny Trastevere apartments behind her and soon she is crossing the street towards the bank of the Tiber. It’s been a windless winter and the Tiber is flat, reflecting blue sky and clouds and the prickly heads of bare trees where green river water should be.

Sometimes, Irene takes her heavy camera and stays out for hours. There are angels on the bridge to the Castel Sant’Angelo, or buckets of flowers in the Campo de’ Fiori market, which is minutes’ walk from the Pantheon, from Giolitti for her next espresso and a gelato, and the next thing Irene knows she is in the Piazza Navona with the camera strap rubbing the back of her neck raw and the noon sun making it almost impossible to look at Bernini’s fountain without squinting.

When it rains she just takes her smartphone. Fills the camera roll with photographs of fountains and churches and window displays and narrow streets and small pasta restaurants, like an absolute _tourist_ , because there is little else for Irene to think about these days and Rome is staggeringly beautiful, in its way.

The water in the odd boat-shaped fountain in front of the Spanish Steps, for instance, glows bright blue when the rest of the day is grey, and its spouts are bitterly cold, and yet groups of tourists and students will duck their heads to drink the aqueduct water. Irene can buy gelato and make-up from there, make her way to the Santa Maria del Popolo to sit in a pew with her scarf and hooded coat tugged off, and watch art students silently rendering the sculptures in charcoal.

The bone-deep weariness of exercise and the chill of an overcast day creep into Irene’s heels. There is a temptation to sprawl, knees spread, across the wooden pew for a while longer. The tourists filter through the chapel with the Caravaggio hanging, but the studious girl in front of Irene is intent upon capturing a marble face on paper.

The Piazza del Popolo is stunning at sunset, with its obelisk surrounded by teenagers and the twin churches and twin streets, sparkling with dinnertime lights. So Irene fills her smartphone with photographs of her own life, of blue and yellow twilight scenes, instead of the people and secrets she used to know. She has walked and shopped the Via del Corso, she has skirted the Vittorio Emmanuel monument, she has gazed up at Trajan’s Column highlighted pink in the sunset like a bloody tourist, forgetful of the columns of London.

When Irene returns to the tiny flat in picturesque Trastevere, she drops her damp and depressed-looking coat onto a hook and straightens the hem of her black jumper over the top of her trousers. She’s just flung herself across the too-soft sofa when Renée says she is cooking saltimbocca and orders Irene to get the wine.

“Convince me,” Irene says, hand over her eyes.

Renée waves a vegetable knife by her ears emphatically without turning around. “So help me God, Margaret, if you do not set the table for dinner like a normal human being, you will sleep on that sofa for three _days_.”

Irene sighs and goes into the kitchen, hips swaying. The little kitchen is divinely warm after a day out in the elements, and the smell and sound of frying meat stop her throat. She hooks an arm over Renée’s shoulders. “Have I been rude?”

“Come home, don’t kiss me, don’t offer to pour me wine – guess what’ll happen when it’s your turn to cook, hmm.”

Irene tucks a messy lock of hair behind Renée’s ear and smirks across at her. “What if I brought home dessert?”

Renée takes the pan and ducks out of Irene’s arm, laughing. “You haven’t, Margaret, that’s the thing. Wonder why I put up with you. Get me a plate, for God’s sake. Are all Englishwomen so useless?”

“Oh yes, that’s me down to a tee,” Irene nods. “Old, English, completely useless.”

Renée mutters something that Irene is sure comes with a blush and is, in fact, a disgruntled concession about her breasts.


	13. a Hospital Room

Irene’s eyes sink to the bottom of her teacup as she sips and there’s an unattractive line between her brows. She can see clear through the light brew, to the dusty specks of fragmented tea leaves that passed through the strainer. 

“Not the news I expected to hear this morning,” Irene admits. If she seems excessively cross when she sets her teacup down then she can’t be blamed.

Anita – younger than Kate, glossy dark hair and a straight fringe, bare-shouldered peplum top stretching across a flat chest – scrolls through her phone and says, “The florist can deliver any time before three in the afternoon.”

Irene opens her desk drawer with a huff and digs in the back for the cardstock. As she uncaps a heavy fountain pen she hates, she says, “Actually, I’d like this to be delivered by one of ours in London. Call Stephanie, maybe. A single rose, fresh as you can. In... a glass flask of water. Don’t know if the bastard would appreciate that, but...”

Irene twists around in her chair, the card in between two stiff fingers. There are no words on it, just the flowery almost-face of the Devil and a large ‘W’ fiercely coloured in with black ink.

“Make sure it comes with this. And tell her to Snapchat me.”

*

Her morning’s been ruined, really. The inside of her chest itches with an anxiety she can’t scratch. She wonders whether it would really help – walking into that hospital room and seeing for herself, tucking the rose in with her own fingers, testing the temperature of his cheek which she’s only ever reached for with the tongue of a crop.

*

A woman sways out of a hospital room, kissable skin from top to bottom. A second woman raises her camera phone to her chin, but doesn’t press anything. She taps the cool screen against her lower lip thoughtfully. Looks back through the glass window of Sherlock Holmes’ hospital room, and back again to the woman’s receding silhouette.

“Who are _you_ ,” she murmurs to herself.


	14. Sussex Downs

Irene is a stranger in flat shoes and a white maxi dress patterned with blue lilies. She rings the bell but turns her back to the door, looking down the garden path and beyond the low stone wall. The garden beds on either side of the path are pitted with holes; bags of new soil and manure and pots of thin saplings wait on the lawn. Irene hums and tuts – an orange tree wouldn’t last long here, and it’s too late in summer, too close to autumn, to plant with much confidence.

When the cottage door opens, Irene looks over her shoulder with a ready smile before turning the rest of her body, dramatic column of chiffon and gleaming white shoulders and all. Irene tips her chin up a little, the better to let her eyelashes flutter from underneath the shade of her wide-brimmed hat.

“Hello!” she says, stepping back towards the cottage. “I’m here about the rental property.”

The woman has her head tilted sheepishly from behind the door, wavy hair falling off her shoulder. “Hi!” she trills. Oh, Irish. “You must be Margaret?”

“And you’re Janine.” Irene pads down the pebbled path and extends a hand.

Janine’s hand is so much warmer than hers. She pulls the door fully open and steps back into the shade of the house. “Sorry about—everything. Everything in the kitchen works, though. Can I make you a coffee? Tea?”

“Tea, thank you.”

Janine chatters as she leads Irene through the house, hands waving at unseen parts of the cottage as she thinks of them. “It’s just that the yards are so big, they’re such a mess. A few of the smaller rooms need to be furnished, cupboards to clean and such, and I need new smoke alarms. The gardeners are coming around today and tomorrow, I swear.”

“I’m not in a rush to move in,” Irene promises. She leaves her purse on the kitchen island and leans her elbows on it with her most placating smile. “You and I are both city women, I’d say we need time to work up to this.”

Janine’s frantic energy seems to come to a standstill, then. She takes a deep breath, looking down at her hands, and her face is even more pleasant in relaxation. She nudges a jar of sugar towards Irene and nods at the back of the house, where floor to ceiling glass doors lead to the yard. “Do you think the flowers are alright, or is countryside gardening not your thing?”

“My family’s green thumb skipped a generation.” Irene watches Janine pour hot water into two mugs before saying, “Why don’t we take these outside?”

*

Irene is a vision in a white hat and chiffon dress under the summer sun, sliding the doors open wide, Janine with a mug of tea in her hand behind her. There’s a small greenhouse in one corner and a flowering tree in the other, dappling the lawn with shade.

“Ohh, beehives,” Irene breathes.

“You like them?”

“I might do,” Irene replies, running a fingertip along a miniature white roof, worn and brittle.

“They don’t look out of place to you?” Janine changes her grip on the bottom of her hot mug. “I was about to get rid of them but you can do what you like, of course. You’ll have to repaint all of the hives, at the very least – the wood’s on its last legs.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Irene says decisively, blowing on her steaming tea. “I might let a neighbour keep the bees for me, in fact, so long as they keep the flowers blooming and make honey.”

She faces Janine and lets out a pleased sigh, tea between both hands. “Isn’t this lovely?”

Janine raises an eyebrow. “Quaint English countryside cottage image?”

“Exactly. I’ll sign everything today.”

Janine is shocked into a grin. “You want to take it?”

“Of course. But, before I make those signatures, I’ve got to ask, darling – are you hungry?”

*

At lunch in the village, Irene’s gaze pins down Janine with her fuchsia blouse and black trousers and metallic statement necklace screaming _not from around here_ and says, “I confess we have a mutual acquaintance.”

There’s a little voice that goes, Don’t be so dramatic, Renie, you’re not Her anymore, you’re not Catwoman revealing her secret identity.

“Really? Who?”

“Mr Holmes himself. Sherlock knows me.”

Janine’s mouth curls on one side. “You saw all the papers back in London, then?”

“You’re not as infamous as Monica Lewinsky yet, don’t worry.”

“So how do you know Sherl, then?”

Irene purses her lips, and pops them contemplatively. “I was a case. You can call me Irene,” she says, too quickly. “It’s Margaret on paper, but... Yes. Have you read Doctor Watson’s blog?”

Janine’s brows creep together in thought. “Irene... No, I _know_ this, there’s a case with the—the thingy—”

“There’s not much there that John was able to write about me,” Irene reassures her. “I’m still under witness protection, have been since the case finished.”

Janine’s face clears. “Aha, gotcha. So that’s where ‘Margaret Norwood’ comes from.”

“Yes. So I’m afraid any replies to personal questions will be slightly delayed, as I hurry to think of some suitable lies,” Irene grins. “You’ll have to do most of the talking-about-yourself here, sweetheart.”

“Hah. _Well_ , good thing I practised all my lines a little while ago. But then again, you could just look up my interviews online.”

Irene ‘tch’s disapprovingly. “I’m not after that rot. For a start, I know you didn’t sleep with Sherlock.”

Janine chokes back a laugh. “Why don’t you think that I did, and just exaggerated?”

“Because _I_ never slept with Sherlock Holmes, and he’s seen me naked at least three times.”

This time Janine can’t choke it back. “Christ almighty, what am I signing up for?” She grins manically over the table. “Ms Norwood, I think we’re going to have _loads_ to talk about in the next fortnight.”

“Ms Adler,” Irene corrects. “But only in private, you understand.”

“Aha. Gotcha.”

*

With the sky, so empty and clear of clouds it’s almost demanding, looming over their heads and filling her windscreen, Irene asks her passenger, “Have you had time to see the cliffs?”

“No!” Janine cries. “It’s been mad with the real estate agent and everything. I’ve got to drive the morning through every time I want to get to Sussex, all because Dad told me you’re never too young to build up a property portfolio, and especially now that I’m out of a job. I have savings, and the money from selling the story about Sherlock, but... Yeah, the rent will be something extra to tide me over until I find a new job. Incident with my old boss, you know. Security issues.”

“You could take a career break,” Irene suggests. “It does a world of good for stress. Look at me, I’m semi-retired.”

Janine leans her elbow on the windowsill and tips her head into her hand, laughing, self-deprecating, to herself. “God, stress. I’m unemployed and I’ve got my hands full fixing up this place. It’s a great location, but. Dad told me to save money by not letting the estate agent take care of it—”

“Oh, don’t be so gloomy,” Irene chides. “You’ve got me, now, and believe me, I’m a _lot_ more used to ordering people around.”

Irene doesn’t take the turn back to the cottage and Janine doesn’t comment. “It’s quite a view, the chalk cliffs,” Irene says. She smirks. “And maybe sometime I’ll drive us to see the Long Man, and you can guess why they gave him that name.”

Janine erupts into loud, juvenile giggles. Her earrings shake minutely, her shoulders tremble up and down, and her waves of dark hair fall away from her cheek. Irene breathes in, out, tries to focus on the road to the coast.

*

Irene’s car pulls to a stop behind Janine’s cute little blue one on the drive. Janine answers the door in boxer shorts and a t-shirt and no bra.

Irene quirks an eyebrow, looking her up and down. “Did you sleep here?”

Janine does a little display of jazz hands. “Furnishing’s all done! I thought I’d test the whole cottage out for the night. And I knew I wouldn’t be arsed to drive home after all the cleaning yesterday, so I packed an overnight bag.”

“Almost done,” Irene corrects. “I’m only here to sign for the mattress I ordered later today.”

“Long drive just for a new mattress,” Janine remarks.

Irene eyes her appreciatively again. “You’re putting in a lot more effort than I saw last week, too, _landlady_.”

“Well, I’m not going to say no to a fancy new mattress, even if that’s all you’re here for.”

Irene doesn’t step inside. She fixes her eyes on Janine and purses her lips, glossy with rose-coloured lipstick, slowly releases. Her lips pop open silently, warm and tingling. “I could _also_ treat you to lunch again.”

Janine hums in satisfaction. “ _Well_. I’m not going to say no.” She flails a hand at the interior of the house and knocks the doorjamb with her knuckles, hissing. “I’ve—just—I’m going to put on—not these clothes.” She clicks her tongue at the floor, not looking Irene in the eye. “Okay.” And she scurries away.

*

 _Should I bring a wine?  
_ 11.53am

 _Sweet of you, but I have some at home.  
_ 11.55am

 _You won’t owe me anything, I can put it on your rent :L  
_ 12.01pm

 _Just be on time, ring the bell labelled M Norwood, and bring an empty stomach. Stockings optional.  
_ 12.03pm

 _Do you know something I don’t?  
_ 12.06pm

 _Loads.  
_ 12.07pm

*

Janine is standing barefoot in Irene’s bedroom, a plate of curry in front of her chest. “Did you get this from the Pakistani-Indian place in Marylebone?”

“Can you tell?”

“They _almost_ get it tasting like my Mum’s. I can email you a recipe if you like. Not criticising your taste in restaurants, but Mum’s is better.” Janine chews and swallows another mouthful of lamb. “You said you were getting dinner so I didn’t snack in the afternoon and I’m actually starving. I’m just not going to talk for a minute. Sorry you have to watch me eat.”

“Sorry I kept you from your snacks, dear.”

“It’s fine.” Janine licks the corner of her mouth and offers a smile. “You’re taking your spice well for a white girl,” she says.

“Travelled enough to diversify my tastebuds.” Irene sets her plate on her lap and carefully picks her wine glass up from the floor.

Janine kneels down and leaves her plate beside her. In front of her is a spread of stilettos and sandals and platforms, excavated from the depths of Irene’s closet and gathered from the entrance of her flat.

Days before Irene’s moving day, under the half-true claim that Irene owns too large a wardrobe and too great a collection of high heels to store everything practically in the Sussex cottage, Janine has been invited to have dinner and to have her pick of Irene’s shoes.

Half-true because while Irene has spent several years buying new clothes and shoes to replace the massive collection she used to own as The Woman in her career’s heyday, when she had Kate to manage inventory and, oh god, the careful laundering of a hundred different materials, this clutter in her new London flat is nowhere near as excessive. She could manage the move if she made the effort, but Janine is curious and gleeful in her explorations and that, she thinks, is worth the loss.

Janine is staying in London, job searching. Irene will be walking on chalk and grass and cobblestones, and will have no place for these decadent, eye-catching towers of footwear. She and Janine are not the same dress size at all, which is a pity – she’d so enjoy fitting Janine with some of the designer pieces she owns, and Janine would so enjoy getting her hands on them. Irene would so enjoy twirling her finger and having Janine spin around, sitting on the edge of her bed with a glass of wine and watching the play of her bedroom light on blue jacquard stretched across Janine’s stomach. (A prologue, an intermission to the pleasure of unzipping and unbuttoning those pieces.)

Small mercies that they are the same shoe size, otherwise this wouldn’t be nearly so casual and easy. They’d have to sit at a table and it’d be so much more noticeable whenever she refilled their glasses, instead of eating curry one-handed and half-focused on the shoes spread out on the floor.

“Alright, back to work. Oh god, look at _these_!” Janine holds up the right shoe of a pair, covered front to back in gold spikes.

Irene makes a face and washes it away with a mouthful of wine. “I don’t know what possessed me,” she mutters. “I’m not usually so unsubtle.”

“Well they’re hilarious. Put that in the ‘maybe’ pile if you hate them. Ooh, hello there.” Janine scoots forward on her knees and picks up a teal suede pump. “These are a gorgeous colour, where’d you get them?”

They are Irene’s second favourite. Janine looks so delighted, dark eyes so enamoured with the simple _colour_ of them, that Irene’s refusal lingers and burns out in her mouth.

“Maybe pile,” she begrudges.

Give a little, get a little, Irene thinks, but she’s not giving this up all that easily. Whatever ‘this’ is.

*

“You know, I haven’t been to dinner at a friend’s place for a while. We usually go out... Sherlock’s been to my place, actually. He did that thing. You know him. Just... pop! There you go, everything you wanted to know about your personality and more. He deliberately told me mainly the nice parts. It was kind of cute.”

Janine’s smile is glossy pink and her eyes are deep and soft with memory, and Irene’s mouth tastes sour.

“Was going to have dinner with John and Mary, with him. They never called me after the newspaper stories, I can’t blame them. See, if Mary had never asked me to be chief bridesmaid I’d have never met Sherl. Mary’s... that friend, you know, that you have loads of fun with, but you can’t trust them as far as you can throw them? You know that friend? And then you’re like, I just want to have fun. We have fun together, but they keep having all this drama in their lives they never tell you about, so, fuck. I just keep you around so we can hang out and you never tell me enough about your drama for me to help out anyway, so forget it. I’m waving my hands a lot, sorry. It happens when I’m tipsy.”

*

“Remember when I said Sherlock saw me naked?” Irene drawls. She crosses one smooth leg over her knee and swings her foot idly.

Janine nudges their shoulders together, eyes alight. “Yeah, what was all that about?”

“Sorry. Official Secrets Act. But there I was, and his _face_ —”

“Twitching, not quite terrified but surprised and confused enough to be adorable?”

“Oh, it was the funniest thing I’d seen in ages,” Irene says, and she can’t help giving a satisfied, sly grin in Janine’s direction.

Janine watches Irene swirl her drink. She frowns for a split second in thought. “You always sound like you have more history than just a case.”

Irene hums before speaking. “You were engaged to him for all of five minutes, yes?”

“Never got to see the ring in person, even.”

“I did that to him, once. Lied. Acted. Made him think I was interested. Strung him along a bit. It was a game, really. He took it well, in the end.”

Janine laughs. “You’re ridiculous. Nothing between you, honestly? With him looking the way he does and you looking the way you do?”

“Well, I’m gay, and that helps.”

There’s just a jump in her eyebrows, a slight widening of the eyes over the rim of her glass. “You’re kidding. I had no idea.” A nod to herself, a silent _right, then_ in her jaw. And then, a soft smile and a new glass.

“Poor boy,” Janine opines. “Lost you to a supermodel, did he?”

Irene’s mouth pulls to the side, helpless. “I’ve never dated a model. Have done with my fair share of actresses. But it’s been a long time between drinks.”

Janine clicks her tongue sadly. “Three months for me.”

“Try fourteen months.”

“Christ!” Janine shrieks. “What are we doing in here, then? I’d better take you out on the town!”

Irene’s hand curls around the neck of the wine bottle, hard and searching. It’s empty.

*

Janine’s head rolls to the side. Her hair is puffed around her ears and her earrings are swinging and the lightbulb shows exactly where she contoured the large, perfect curve of her cheek, and her eyes are so close, blinking through the brown shadow and mascara, and her mouth is still—like _that_.

“Am I going to be your drunken mistake, Ms Adler?”

That does it. That does it. _That does it._ She hasn’t been called Ms Adler in literally years. They’re in her bedroom. Janine has even been on her knees on the carpet in front of her, surrounded by expensive shoes.

“Oh, Christ,” Irene swears softly.

Her mouth feels exactly the way it looks, exactly the way Irene thinks, with all her experience, all her _history_. Janine’s lips are large and pillow soft, swiped bare of the lipstick she arrived with, and Irene feels like she is diving and being caught.

Janine keeps _laughing_. Even before Irene gets her hand under her shirt, she is screwing her eyes shut in inexplicable mirth.

“Watch it, my fat’s ticklish,” she manages somehow, just before Irene puts her mouth on her neck, not that she’s listening. Irene’s fingers are sinking into the warmth under her shirt, across her stomach and the thin, sensitive skin under the swell of her breast. Ticklish or not this is where her hand is staying, thank you very much, where she’s finally touching the sleepy warm skin she’s imagined quivering underneath her, unbuttoned blouse pulled in halves around that stomach and those hips to die for.

Irene sucks on her neck again and Janine laughs shakily, “What the fuck?” but _carpe iugulum,_ isn’t that what she’s read?

*

A fortnight brings them into autumn. Irene is sitting on a tall stool at the kitchen island, toes pointed at the tiled floor, swinging gently. There is a mug of dark coffee in her hands.

The morning sun hits the whole length of the sliding glass doors and fills her little living room with light and gentle yellow heat. She can see the hedges, and the tree, and the greenhouse, and the three adorable, freshly painted beehives.

She doesn’t look away for a long time. Thinking, _This is mine. This is mine. This is mine._

*

 _You could stay the night. You’re my landlady.  
_ 11.36am


	15. the Master Blackmailer

She is known to the villagers as Maggie Norwood, continuing the life she’d lived between Saigon and Rome under the warped name of her ex-lover. She is beautiful, and generous, and busy.

 _Dinner at my flat? You don’t have to drive back to Sussex. xo  
_ 3.20pm

*

Charles Augustus Magnussen walks in and sees her motionless in his chair. He breathes, “Oh,” in that quiet, stiletto-blade-thin voice of his.

Back in the day, Irene had looked like a little fish in a big pond next to the shark that was Magnussen. He was a _professional_ , and clean, whereas she had always dived right into the most sordid of scandals.

But she’s been to hell and back, and so she looks across the desk from his big black chair, and inclines her head at her fist on the table, at the gun in her hand.

“Sit down, Herr Magnussen.”

Magnussen clucks his tongue, shaking his head gently as if scolding her. “I tell you, Ms Adler, I'm having the most striking feeling of déjà vu at the moment. This is not the first time I've found someone cheeky in my private rooms.”

“Innuendo declined,” she snaps. “I’m retired.”

“Oh no, Ms Adler, that's not what _I_ heard. What I heard was that you _were_ retired.” Magnussen mimes a slash across his neck, lightly, flippantly. For two seconds he reminds her of Jim.

Magnussen claps his hands together suddenly, the noise deafening in the study.

“So!” he says, fascinated. “Not dead.”

Irene flexes her black gloved hand. She sits still, with the cowl collar and draping sleeves of her coat like a grim reaper at the desk.

She looks into Magnussen’s shark eyes and confirms, “Not dead.”

**Author's Note:**

> So ends the tale of Irene Adler, a labour of supporting character femslash love that took far longer than I'd anticipated -- but at the end I'm pleased and proud of it. The last two chapters were the most fun, do leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed the read!


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